TERF Wars: Why is Quebec Funding Anti-Trans Activism?
TERF Wars: Why is Quebec Funding Anti-Trans Activism?
In public, the CAQ is distancing itself from PDF Quebec — a group that advocates for conversion therapy and targets trans women online. In private, they've awarded them $500,000 in government money.
They came for Celeste Trianon with a burning hatred.
It wasn't just the death threats and harassment that flooded her social media. The trolls had found Trianon’s university email account and where she worked, and started publishing her personal information online.
The worst of it was in January, after Trianon — who is a trans woman — protested a speech made by an anti trans academic at McGill University. The event made her the target of an online mob that depicted Trianon as a pedophile.
“Okay, here’s one message: ‘You really want to show women and children your dick, don’t you? Way to out yourself as a sexual predator,’” she said, reading the message aloud. “‘You should hang yourself instead. The world is better off without a sexual predator like you.’ That’s just one example.”
On Twitter, Trianon was accused of being “a man” who handed out prosthetic penises to kids so they can learn about “sexual excitement.” The implication that Trianon is grooming kids only ramped up the threats, she says.
That smear didn’t come from some dark corner of the web or an anonymous troll account. It came from Pour les droits des femmes du Québec (PDF Québec), an activist group that claims to use government funding to “promote true equality between women and men.” But PDF Québec is also aggressively anti-trans, often referring to transgendered people as “mutilated” men and lobbying the Quebec government to offer fewer legal protections to the community.
PDF’s attack wasn’t directed at someone dangerous. It was directed at Trianon, a 19-year-old law student who volunteers with trans youth.
Now, to those of us who aren’t personally connected to the struggle over trans rights, this might seem like just another chapter in the endless culture wars. But to people like Trianon, it’s about the right to exist. It’s also a sign that Quebec isn’t immune to the wave of transphobia sweeping across legislatures in the United States.
While Quebec’s government isn’t threatening to ban gender affirming care or fine teachers for using the correct pronouns to address a trans person, by funding of PDF Québec they’re effectively legitimizing transphobia. And there’s a growing body of evidence linking transphobia to violence.
In the United States, trans women are four times more likely to face violent victimization — a category that includes rape, homicide and aggravated assault — than cisgendered women. That’s according to a 2021 study published in the American Journal of Public Health.
And though Quebec’s minister for the status of women insists the government wants to fight transphobia, she refused to condemn PDF Québec when confronted about the group during a debate in the National Assembly earlier this month. When Minister Martine Biron was asked to clarify her government’s support of the group, she said the group deserved to be “respected and listened to.”
In an email statement to The Rover, a representative for Biron softened the minister’s tone. Specifically, Biron said she disagrees with PDF’s assertion that the gender identity debate is “contagious and dangerous” or that the number of young people transitioning “is something approaching an epidemic.”
“We condemn any transphobic statement, regardless of where it comes from,” the statement reads.
So why has the Coalition Avenir Québec government given PDF Québec $506,098 in taxpayer money over the past five years? PDF Quebec has existed since 2013, but the CAQ is the first Quebec government to award them funding. Meanwhile, this same government has defunded essential services like Interligne — an emergency hotline helping queer youth struggling with suicidal thoughts.
“This is a service that saves lives and if it doesn’t get government funding this year, it will have to close,” says Jennifer Maccarone, a Liberal MNA who works with Interligne. “So there’s no money for them but we’ve given PDF Québec over $500,000 in public money.
“I’m not saying we should censor them, I’m not saying they shouldn’t exist. I’m just saying we shouldn’t be giving them taxpayer money.”
Maccarone says that PDF are ideologically aligned with the CAQ since they’re one of the only feminist groups that support the government’s controversial Bill 21 religious symbols ban. They also share its opposition to interesectional feminism — a philosophy that acknowledges trans women, women of colour and Indigenous women face forms of oppression that white cisgendered women don’t.
PDF Québec was created to support the Parti Québécois government during the contentious debate over its Charter of Quebec Values in 2013. The Charter would have made it illegal for hijab-wearing women to work in hospitals, public schools and serve as crown attorneys.
One of the province’s most influential feminist group, Fédération des femmes du Québec, opposed the charter because it imposed restrictions on a woman’s freedom of expression. That position caused a faction within the FFQ to break off and form PDF Québec. The faction, led by Michèle Sirois, preached a vision of feminism that excluded swaths of Quebec’s muslim population. In PDF Québec’s reckoning, the hijab is a symbol of the patriarchy and any woman who wears it could not rightfully call themselves a feminist.
After the PQ was unseated in 2014, PDF Québec receded into the background.
But they re-emerged as a crucial ally to the CAQ during its first mandate five years ago, when the new government adopted Bill 21. The group has also been active on other fronts, fighting to limit the right of trans people to change the gender on their government issued ID.
PDF Québec also fought against a provincial ban on conversion therapy for trans youth. Conversion therapy is a form of treatment that discourages patients from expressing any gender identity that doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. It has been condemned by the Canadian Psychiatric Association and over 50 other medical bodies because it’s been linked to poor health outcomes — most notably, suicidal ideation and attempts.
Two sources inside the CAQ say they’re uncomfortable with PDF Québec’s anti transactivism but that the group’s conservative vision of feminism aligns with the government on other key issues.
“It’s political opportunism in its ugliest form,” Maccarone said. “People in the trans community are terrified of being targeted by PDF and yet they’ve given them half a million dollars.”
A spokesperson for the ministry of labour and social solidarity — which awards grants to PDF Québec — told The Rover it has the right to withhold future funding to the group unless a “solution or new positioning is established.”
Though Maccarone has repeatedly confronted government officials about PDF Québec in the National Assembly, it took an article by CBC Montreal reporter Erika Morris for the CAQ to reconsider its support of the controversial group.
“The (CBC Montreal) article is taken very seriously by the ministry,” spokesperson Catherine Poulin wrote, in an email statement to The Rover. “Given this situation, an analysis will be done prior to any funding renewal.”
***
PDF’s attack on Trianon uses the same tactics employed by the American far right.
They take a kernel of truth, distort the most extreme aspect of it and use it to insinuate that she’s a sexual deviant. In a now-deleted post — one that superimposes a picture of Trianon next to prosthetic penises — PDF wrote that Trianon teaches kids about sexual excitement and doles out plastic genitalia.
The truth is, Trianon sits on the board of Trans Estrie, a community group that helps teenagers experiencing gender dysphoria. She also founded a legal clinic for trans youth looking to change the sex on their government issued identification.
Part of Trans Estrie’s mandate is providing gender affirming care, which sometimes involves providing prosthetic devices to be worn under clothing.
“This isn’t nefarious. It allows young people to try something on and see if it works for them before going through a major medical procedure,” said Eve Parker Finley, a Montreal-based musician who is a trans woman. Finley says that prosthetics and chest binders — a garment that flattens breasts — can be empowering to a young person who otherwise feels alien in their own body.
“What’s crazy is that these anti-trans movements like to spread panic by implying that any kid who wants to wear a dress will have their genitals chopped off,” said Finley, who used to give seminars to educate people about transitioning. “But they also fight against creating a space where young people can talk about this kind of stuff. If you don’t let people explore their gender identity and try something on, you create this binary where it’s all or nothing.
“And I think that anyone who wants access to hormones or surgery should have access to it. But it’s not one or the other. There has to be room for people to explore gender fluidity.”
One of the harmful “universalist” talking points made by groups like PDF Québec is for gender-affirming care to be outlawed for anyone under 18. When interviewed by friendly media outlets, PDF spokesperson Michèle Sirois has implied that trans youth are being led astray by big pharmaceutical companies looking to sell hormones and other drugs.
In reality, it’s often when trans people are in their teens that they need gender-affirming care the most.
Over a dozen studies on the topic consistently show two trends. The first, that access to gender-affirming care lessens the risk of depression and suicidal thoughts in trans youth. The second — and far more alarming one — that teens who can’t access this treatment are up to 7.6 times more likely to attempt suicide than cisgender youth.
People like Sirois don’t generally engage with this set of facts and PDF Québec rarely grants interviews to journalists who question its stance on the trans community. On Twitter, where it routinely targets trans women, PDF Québec has blocked dozens of reporters, activists and trans people whose views do not align with their own.
“If it was just some group that my neighbour belonged to, I would be able to live and let live,” said Maccarone. “But this is public funding. I’m paying for them to exist, you are, we all are. I can’t accept that.”
PDF Québec did not respond to The Rover’s interview request. But in a statement to CBC Montreal, the group defended itself against allegations of transphobia:
“Two transsexual people [SIC] were even among the founding members when PDF Québec was created. Our mandate as an organization is to defend the rights and interests of women with respect to their dignity and safety and thus contribute to the debates of ideas that take place in a democratic society like Quebec.”
***
Despite what groups like PDF Québec claim, people don’t just transition on a whim.
There are a strict set of rules in Quebec that outline how old someone has to be and what medical files they must provide before receiving gender-affirming care. Before undergoing most procedures, a patient must have a documented history of gender dysphoria, “reasonably well controlled and documented mental health issues” as well as two letters of reference from a health professional.
If they want to undergo a vaginoplasty or metoidioplasty, the patient has to be 18, show proof that they’ve received 12 months of hormonal therapy and that they’ve been living as the gender they identify with for at least one year.
And even those who’ve gone through the process with no regrets say it can be a profoundly degrading experience. Medical staff frequently misgender patients, there are stories of nurses who won’t look trans women in the eye or postoperative treatment that goes terribly wrong.
Before moving to Quebec, Rine Vieth went to school in one of the most conservative districts in southern Ohio.
“My high school made international news when a trans girl, several years after I left, she took her own life,” said Vieth, who uses they/them pronouns. “Leela Alcorn was forced to go through this aggressively Christian conversion therapy. You’re essentially forced to renounce your gender identity. It’s an incredibly degrading process.
“Not long after that, she wrote a suicide note, walked in front of a semi-trailer and died. It can be incredibly isolating to feel like you shouldn’t listen to yourself, that you shouldn’t trust yourself, that your gender is being policed.”
In Montreal, where Vieth lives today, they found a community and access to gender-affirming care. In their case, it was “top surgery” which removes breast tissue from the torso. Ordinarily, it’s a relatively simple procedure but Vieth says it was “a fucking nightmare” when they had the surgery in 2021.
“The clinic didn’t give me painkillers after the surgery and it really fucked me up,” said Vieth. “The pain was just … I was sobbing and begging someone to kill me. It was the most incredible pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. The state of my brain was just pain and it hurt so bad I thought it would never end.”
Making matters worse, Vieth was being shuttled around the city with plastic drains still attached to their wounds. The clinic had told Vieth to go to a walk-in clinic and lie to medical staff in order to get the drains removed.
“I was told not to tell the clinic I had top surgery. I have emails that ask me to lie,” said Vieth. “In the end, there was this nurse — a wonderful québécoise auntie — who got on the phone and shouted down the people who’d messed up. I knew other people who were being denied post op care and shuttled around the system looking for answers. If it wasn't for that one nurse, I don’t know what would have happened.”
Vieth has filed a complaint with the health ministry but they don’t regret the surgery. Despite what groups like PDF Québec argue in public, it’s actually quite rare that people who transition express regret after the fact.
An American study that surveyed 1,989 people who transitioned, only six regretted their decision. That’s 99.7 per cent of people who were satisfied with their decision to received gender affirming care. By way of comparison, research into knee-replacement surgery found that up to 30 per cent of people who undergo the procedure are unsatisfied with the results. And yet few question the value of knee-replacement surgery with the same zeal as gender-affirming care.
“I’m happy with who I am and I’m not on some crusade to change the way people live their lives,” said Vieth, who works as a researcher on immigration law. “I’m just asking for the right to exist and be respected. I’m not yelling at people constantly for getting my pronouns wrong. I live an ordinary, often pretty nerdy life. I don’t understand what’s so offensive about that.
“It feels important that you’re the first journalist I talk to about this. I was afraid to say anything negative about the surgery to a reporter because they might use it as evidence that gender-affirming surgeries are bad. Even if, in this case, it’s the care that wasn’t up to standard.”
For Finlay, groups like PDF Québec are disingenuous when they argue against allowing minors to receive gender-affirming care.
“I really don’t think they believe a successful transition can ever happen,” said Finlay. “There’s fear mongering about how trans people are coming after your kids. It’s like this new satanic panic. But I still don’t buy their politics are about protecting kids. I feel like they’re trying to stop people from transitioning altogether and the youth angle is just the first step in a larger fight against our rights.”
***
Trianon says she’s gotten used to the hate mail and death threats.
“I’ve become numb to them,” she said. “It’s different when people try to find you and publish your information. When your physical safety is at risk, it’s scary. But the threats have become so common that I'm rarely shocked anymore.”
It’s easy to forget from all her activism and public work but Trianon is still just a teenager. Ultimately, she just wants to be able to life a normal life, get her degree and maybe meet someone and fall in love (the sorts of things most 19-year-olds take for granted).
“I’ve gotten so focused on trans activism that I often forget what it’s like to live a normal life,” said Trianon. “I tend to introduce myself in two ways. I am Celeste, a trans activist, a member of Trans Estrie and someone who fights to advance the rights of trans people across Quebec. The other introduction goes like this: I am Celeste, a 19-year-old law student at Université de Montréal.
“I rarely get to explore that second introduction. I haven’t had a first love, I haven’t had too many normal moments where I just get to be myself. Sometimes, everything feels like a struggle because it has been. I’m not intending on quitting trans activism anytime soon. But I do wish I had the possibility of experiencing a normal life, the kind I would have had if I didn’t need to fight for my rights since my teenage years.”
“We just want to exist and it’s depressing that saying that is somehow controversial.”
Merci pour cet excellent reportage.
This transphobia movement is frightening, thanks for doing this article.